Posted on 02/05/2003 5:44:17 AM PST by JohnGalt
LIONS AND HYENAS by Thomas Fleming
A recent series of exchanges on LewRockwell.com reveal the fissure that divides libertarians from conservatives. More precisely, as our colleague Clyde Wilson points out, it divides one group of "chirping sectaries" within the libertarian coalition from all those conservatives and libertarians who understand that a civilized social order is, at the very least, an essential precondition for political and economic liberty. Beyond this limited Hayekian insight, conservatives have also understood that freedom of choice is a trivial gift, if the choice is between hamburger chains or the name brands of junk sold at Wal-Mart or the junk programming available on 100 Cable channels 24 hours a day or the junk candidates put forward by the Democratic and Republican parties.
The specific bone of contention in the current debate is a silly and ignorant attack on Russell Kirk for his strictures against "ideology." In defending on of his beloved mentors, Lee Cheek (at Lee University in Tennessee) made several wise suggestions, comparing Kirk's point of view with that of Erik von Kuhneldt-Leddihn. I knew and admired both men reasonably well and discussed these long-dead issues with them in the years before my beard went as white as Russell's hair. Readers who want to follow the debate can go to LewRockwell.com. What I offer here is a letter sent to several friends, not in defense of Kirk—the dead lion will always be eaten by hyenas but it makes him no less a lion and his attackers no less hyenas—but to point the discussion in a more productive direction.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Friends:
Our late friend (and quondam editorial colleague) Russell Kirk was perfectly correct in what he wrote on the dangers of ideology, and our other late friend Erik von Kuhneldt-Leddihn was also correct in pointing out the weakness inherent in our Anglo-American suspicion of systematic thought. However, ideology and philosophy are two quite distinct propositions.
In the lower sense in which Marx sometimes used it, ideology means a propagandistic pseudophilosophy crafted to defend the interests of a ruling class. In that sense one might speak today of neoconservative ideology. However, even in the highest sense, ideology usually implies a totalitarian mindset, such as the libertarian or communist, which presumes to force all human experience into its system.
On the other hand, serious and systematic thought—philosophy, properly understood—provides the set of guidelines by which to judge the experiences of everyday life, tests and criteria by which to measure our decisions and habits, but it does not, should not presume to offer one-size-fits-all answers. Russell Kirk respected philosophy, but it was the ideological rage of Jacobins, Communists, and Nazis that he objected to.
Kirk repudiated ideology, but, it must be admitted, he also had no head for philosophy. Neither, I am sad to say, did Kuhneldt-Leddihn, who, in addition, was utterly mistaken about all things American, as I had occasion more than once to tell him, when he began riding his favorite hobby horse—how the mob took over America during President Jackson's two terms.
When the two were alive, the discussions were at least entertaining and carried out in a good spirit. Erik, as a liberal (as well as a monarchist, but a liberal first) had an ideology he had inherited from classical liberalism, albeit nuanced with an infusion of anticlerical Catholicism and respect for tradition. Like his hero Burke, Russell had an instinct, a point of view, a well-formed taste or appetite that served him well (better, in some ways, than it served Burke), and his intuitive judgments on political issues and literary figures is almost always either correct or at least instructive. That neither he nor Burke could offer the systematic thought required to counter the left would only be a problem if he were playing the role of a guru (disgusting thought) such as Strauss, Voegelin, and other foreigners wished to play.
It is simply not true that the Anglo-American mind has no capacity for philosophy. Read Berkeley or Hume if you need to be disabused of that illusion. Unfortunately, most of our philosophizing has been destructive, because it is part of the broad sweep of a corrosive tradition going back to Descartes, at least. Dr. Johnson, a far better moral and political guide than Burke, had in fact thought many things out systematically, but (this is my view) understanding the world he lived in, he couched his thought in essays and a novel, preferring to appeal to his English readers' sound instincts and common sense rather than to build on the follies of Locke. His loathing of Adam Smith, so often put down to personal causes, was the instinctive response of a principled conservative Christian in the presence of the Devil.
The truth is that those of us who are Christians already have a point of view summed up in the Creeds and the Scriptures, and those of us who are Catholic or Orthodox or traditional Anglican/Lutheran (or even Calvinist) are part of a tradition that reaches back to Plato and Aristotle, transmitted through Cicero, Augustine, and Boethius, and refined by Thomas. This tradition tells us why something exists rather than nothing, why man exists and what his nature is; it prescribes moral rules (e.g., chastity, generosity, patience, restraint) and social institutions (e.g. marriage without divorce, self-sufficient families, respect for authority but decentralization of power), and has much to say on economic life—though it repudiates the ideologies of capitalism and socialism equally. (The chief virtue of capitalist ideology—the striving to have more property and wealth—is condemned repeatedly as pleonexia in the New Testament.)
There are many varieties of this perspective, especially in politics, but Althusius and Thomas, to name only two great men, agree on most of the important things. This Christian "ideology" is precisely what all forms of liberalism (from Adam Smith to Karl Marx to Stanley Fish) have been trying to destroy. Instead of constantly responding to the ninny-nannying ignoramuses who expose themselves on websights—as so many intellectual flashers—we should do better to concentrate on recovering and defending our own "ideology," which has the rudiments, at least, of all the answers to all our problems.
This is all the more important, as Scott Richert reminds me, since libertarians and socialists both misrepresent the nature and extent of the Christian tradition: Socialists, in attempting to appropriate it to their own purposes in their pursuit of absolute power; and libertarians, who pretend that Christianity has little to say on matters of economics and politics, leaving them free to be "Christian libertarians," if they so choose, or even "Catholic libertarians". Acton made the attempt and confessed that as a Catholic he was a good liberal. A man might call himself anything and claim to be a Jewish Nazi, but in adopting Nazism, he forfeits the right to be considered a Jew, and in adopting the abstract and self-centered morality of Smith (I am thinking especially of the Theory of Moral Sentiments) and Mises, we cease to be Christian. On that point, Ayn Rand was right.
Reason is a necessary part of our humanity, as Aristotle noted, but it is only a part, however indispensable, and must not be allowed to destroy other, equally vital human qualities, such as love and friendship. The ethic of Aristotle, no less than the ethic of St. Paul, is rooted in love and friendship rather than in the universal abstractions that turned the modern world into warring camps of butchering ideologues.
But the time has come to say good-bye, not to this discussion, but to the sterile debates of the conservative movement, which are, at best, instinctively conservative responses within a leftist framework of thought we should be destroying.
Posted for ongoing discussion between paleo-libs and paleo-cons. If you think that FDR is the father of modern conservatism and MLK, more important that Tailgunner Joe, this is probably not a thread for you.
The Christian message is an individuating message. One's salvation is on one's own shoulders, no one else's. Similarly, the Christian is prohibited from trying to impose himself, his creed or his practices on others by force, though it encourages proselytization by non-forcible means. This is the antithesis of a political premise.
As a prescription for an individual's life, Christianity is unparalleled. But it does not solve, nor should it attempt to solve, the problem of how to deal with others who do not share the Christian ethos. That's the sphere of politics, in which non-Christian and non-religious viewpoints must inevitably be heard. The alternative is to await the complete conversion of the world to Christianity, or the Second Coming, whichever comes first.
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit The Palace Of Reason:
http://palaceofreason.com
That's true. On the other hand, I think it might be safe to say that how one understands the tenets of one's faith can have a great bearing on one's politics. I've noticed that when I meet committed Christians who are also liberals (not in the classical sense, but one of today's liberals), there are also certains passages of Scripture which we understand quite differently. For instance, the first few chapters of The Acts of the Apostles.
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit The Palace Of Reason:
http://palaceofreason.com
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.